The Writing on the Wall: A Novel (11 page)

“I would like Edna St. Vincent Millay’s new volume of poetry,” I said—and being able to say this out loud made the whole trip worthwhile.

The woman wore her glasses on a chain and now she tugged them up her nose to see me sharper. I think my coat surprised her. That someone wearing a shaggy farmer’s coat could have heard of a famous poet.

She smiled kindly enough. “Do you mean A Few Figs from Thistles?”

I nodded.

“We don’t have any in yet. It’s proven very popular in New York. I did place an order.”

She must have seen my disappointment. “Wait a moment,” she said, climbing backwards down the ladder. “A new shipment came in this morning I haven’t unpacked. Novels mostly, but perhaps, just perhaps. Let me check in back.”

She was gone a long time. When she returned she carried something cupped in her hands like a baby kitten.

“One copy! It’s your lucky day, miss.”

I handed over my money and she handed it back all wrapped. “Just a moment,” she said, glancing out the window. “Let me add an extra layer for the storm.”

I wanted to touch it, open the pages, and I was sorry she had wrapped it so quickly. I had never bought a book before and decided that this must be the proper etiquette, not to look at a book until you brought it home. I thanked her for her help. The turtle-like man stood behind me with an armful of novels and I felt jealous and happy for him, too.

It should have been faster going back to the station, since I now knew my way, but the snow blew sideways and it was impossible to walk without wincing. The train pulled late into the station—the locomotive’s silhouette was nearly doubled by the snow clinging to its hood. When the conductor put down his box for me to board I heard him call out to another conductor further along the platform. “Let’s hope they have the St. Bernards ready, Mike!”

There were more passengers this time, mill girls returning for Christmas to the farms where they grew up. They were dressed in the latest fashions, trying to act sophisticated and aloof, but giggling, too, they were so excited at going home. With their gifts and bundles it was hard to find room and I had to wedge myself in near the middle of the car.

We were well out of the station before I got up the nerve to free the book from its wrapping. The jacket was simple. A Few Figs from Thistles by Edna St. Vincent Millay, with red bands boxing the title and softer red highlighting her name. The covers, when I slipped back the jacket, were blue—sea blue, I decided, though I have never seen the ocean. They had a rich texture, since especially fine cloth had been used. I ran my fingers along the front, then down the spine. The book felt good in my hands, not too heavy, not too light. I opened it to the middle, enjoying the perfect way the paper felt, stiff but not too stiff, pliable but not too pliable, with a faint grainy quality that made me sense the trees and forests from which it came.

I took my time with this and only looked at the back of the jacket when I felt ready. Miss Millay’s photograph was very small. She was even younger than I imagined, not much older than me and much prettier. Her hair was bobbed but a rebellious curl was fallen loose over her ear. Her eyebrows were thin, she had no defenses over her eyes, so they looked very vulnerable. Her small hand was up against the side of her small chin and below it was a glimpse of lacy black collar. She had a perfect Mary Pickford mouth and her nose was delicate and very feminine. My friend, I decided, though I knew it was silly. My new best friend.

I intended to keep the pages uncut but I knew Peter would understand my temptation. For a cutter I used my comb. I cut all the pages, holding the book open on my lap, then when I finished went back and read the book straight through, trying on the weight and feel of the words the same way I had the covers and paper.

After that I read through it again, this time more slowly. To the Not Impossible Him. The Philosopher. The Singing Woman from the Wood’s Edge. MacDougal Street. I loved all the poems, especially the way she seemed to be talking very simply right to me and then suddenly deepened the meaning so I had to grasp. But it was there when I grasped. She tutored me as I read, never went so fast and far my understanding could not catch up.

I loved the sonnets best. I knew they were sonnets because they were fourteen lines and Peter had taught Lawrence and me how to recognize their rhythm. I decided to memorize one so when I gave him the book I could recite it out loud. It was nearly impossible to pick a favorite, at least not until I came to the last one which was perfect.

“Oh, my beloved have you thought of this:

How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,

More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,

And make you old, and leave me in my prime?

How you and I, who scale together yet

A little while the sweet, immortal height

No pilgrim may remember or forget,

As sure as the world turns, some granite night

Shall like awake and know the gracious flame

Gone our forever on the mutual stone;

And call to mind that on the day you came

I was a child, and you a hero grown—

And the night pass, and the strange morning break

Upon our anguish for each other’s sake.”

Even with the girls talking away on either side of me I soon had it by heart. “I was a child and you a hero grown.” I recited that to myself over and over again a hundred times.

Absorbed in the book, I was slow to realize something was wrong. The silence alerted me first—the mill girls had stopped their chattering. They sat straighter than before and looked out the window in absolute terror. These were farm girls and you could add to that whatever hard conditions they knew from the mills and yet they were terrified by the storm’s ferocity. The train had slowed down but if anything it rattled even more than it had when it was speeding and I realized it was from the wind—that the wind was blowing furiously, bringing with it the hardest, thickest, most malevolent snow I had ever seen.

We had left Brattleboro at one, which meant it must be four now and yet the dark was already total. The lights in the train went out and soon the heat failed, too. All the girls, dressed in their city best, began shivering. The conductor marched down the aisle with a grim expression, brushing off their questions. “Delay!” he shouted from the end of the car. “Dee . . . eee . . . lay!”

We finally started up again, the girls resumed chatting, but then it became like a giant was rapping his knuckles against the window while his dog grabbed us between its teeth, worrying us this way then that. After ten minutes we stopped again, this time for good.

There were sobs and screams from the flightier girls. They did not like that it was dark. The older ones seemed resigned, they were already unrolling their bundles searching for thicker clothes. I was warm in Alan’s coat but wanted to scream louder than any of them, just because I was so frustrated and worried. Not from the storm but the delay, what it would mean if I was marooned.

“How long will this be?” I asked the conductor on his next trip down the aisle.

“The drifts have us blocked.”

“I have to get home.”

“We’re here for the night, Miss. It will be cold but at least you’ll be safe. We have coffee brewing in the caboose and we’ll bring that around for you. I suggest that everyone make themselves comfortable.”

He said this kindly and his voice stayed calm. But I could not take that for an answer because if I did then everything, all the plans I had constructed so carefully, would come crashing down. Portents of doom were what the heroines of those novels I read as a girl were always experiencing—and now here it was my turn, the portents were real and powerful and bewildering, since I could not understand what the doom would consist of, only that it would come if I stayed on that train.

If we were three hours north of Brattleboro then it meant we had to be close to town where the high school was. The tracks were up high, exposed to the worst of the storm, but things would almost certainly be easier down on the main road. I wrapped the book up again, pressed it down into the coat’s deepest pocket, then walked quickly to the rear of the car so I would not have time to lose my nerve. The door was frozen, it took shoving to pry it open, but then I got my knee and shoulder against the edge and really pushed.

I tried letting myself down slowly but the steps were icy and I tumbled off. It did not hurt, the drift was so deep, but snow got down my collar and turned to ice water against my skin. I felt in my pocket for the book and felt reassured that it was safe. I had come down near the front of the train. The locomotive, so arrogant and unstoppable, had butted its snout into a drift three times as high, so it now looked very meek. Steam whistled from the stack but it sounded soft and plaintive, as if the engine were sobbing in mortification.

I slid down the embankment, spreading out my arms to keep from going too fast. There was a band of alders bent into hoops from the snow but I ducked through them and gained the road. The drifts were not as high as on the tracks, though the snow was still over my knees. There was a crossing gate festooned with icicles, but no sign of traffic—any autos would have been quickly swallowed. With the wind blowing from the south it meant I must keep my back to it in order to head north. I pulled the coat collar up high as it would go, but that left most of my hair exposed and the icy pellets soon made it feel like tangled lead.

Where the road rose the traction was treacherous and where it dipped the wind collected even thicker drifts. Every fourth or fifth step I had to stop and catch my breath, though that was hard with the cold squeezing my lungs. The wind made so much noise it was almost silent. It was like the locomotive had started up again, two locomotives, ten locomotives, they were speeding down icy rails right over my head, yet all I could sense of them was their rushing, belittling power, not their noise.

It was hard staying calm. The more exhausted I became the more my fancy started working on me and it was this loss of control that frightened me most. At one point I thought I saw a bonfire, imagined voices cackling in glee, decided it must be hobos, drunken hobos, so I turned away from the road and tried a detour through a swamp. That was a mistake and it took me a long time to grope my way back. In the willows ahead of me appeared a very still shape—a doe sinking to her knees, the weight on her forehead simply too much to bear.

I had read that to keep your courage up you should always whistle, but when I tried it my lips were far too cracked and dry. What worked better was remembering winters when I was little and how I used to walk back to the Hodgsons’ farm from the library reading a book the entire way. Miss Millay was in my pocket, I was not going to take her out, but I recited to myself the sonnet I memorized on the train. “Some granite night” was the phrase I kept saying, since I was up to my waist in one now, with snow as hard and sharp as shredded stone. It seemed to warm me, the literal truth of it, and then I remembered one of her couplets that helped even more. “Let us go forth together to the spring; Love must be this, if it be anything.” In my stupor, my exhaustion, it became my destination, the only thought my head would allow. I am going forth with my lover to the spring I told myself, over and over until it made no sense. Going forth. Forth. Forth to the spring.

I found another trick that helped. Instead of just carrying Miss Millay’s book, I convinced myself that I was carrying her in my arms, my newest friend, and she was light and lithe and yielding—not a burden but something that lightened my way.

I do not know how long it was before I saw my first light. I was reluctant to believe in it, since I was convinced I was hallucinating. Very tiny, no bigger than a match—a yellow flame, one that grew steadier, less lambent, the closer I got. The town! There were suddenly more lights, so it was like a Christmas tree had blown over and scattered its candles either side of the road. I knew I was safe now or could be if I went to one of the doors and knocked, but all the courage I found in myself was reluctant to just quit. Off in the distance, dark and blocky, I could make out the high school and past that came the first shops, but they were deserted in the storm and in some respects the last half mile I walked was the hardest and loneliest yet.

I had never been to his home before but I knew where it was. On the edge of town near the river, the last in a row of three. A cottage more than a house—it was snug and secret looking behind icy vines. A candle shone from an upstairs window, though there were no lights below. The knocker on the door was frozen so I used my hand. It was not long before Peter came to the door, wearing a silky green robe. He was surprised, but he got over that instantly, seemed ready to start teasing me about something, and then that expression changed, too, once he put the light on and looked at me, really looked at me. Shock, concern, tenderness. They blinked down his face in three successive flashes and I realized for the first time what walking through that storm had cost me.

“I’ve brought you this,” I said. I had practiced saying it all day.

I reached down into the coat pocket and brought out the book. I unwrapped it for him, though my hands shook from cold and something more than cold. He took it, stood staring down at it, and his smile, when he looked back up again, was everything I had dreamed it would be.

“Beth,” he said, taking my hands, drawing me inside. “Dear Beth.”

He held the book up to the lamp, nodded, then very carefully placed it on the mantle over the fireplace and squared it away just so. All his concern was on me now. Outside, I had been able to force the cold away, but once I came into his parlor I began shivering uncontrollably and thought I would fall. He drew me over to the fire, turned me so I was facing it, my back toward him, then gently began removing my clothes. He started with the coat, which was stiff as armor, lifted off my blouse, his hands expert and tender, then kneeled so he could remove my skirt. He stood up again and from behind began kneading my bare shoulders transferring his warmth deep into my skin. After a few minutes I could sense his lips very close to my ear. “Can you remove everything else?” he asked. “I’ll be back when you’re ready. No, here—take this first.”